Just read part of an interview with Bono. Isn't it amazing that the leader of one of the most influential rock bands is a sincere believer? And not only that but he's seeking to make an impact on a global scale through advocating for Africa concerning AIDS and trade issues. Praise God for the interesting characters in unusual places that he raises up. Kind of reminds me of how God raised up Joseph in the time of famine.

Taken from: "Bono in Conversation" by Michka Assayas.
Interviewer: The son of God who takes away the sins of the world. I wish I could believe in that.

Bono: But I love the idea of the Sacrificial Lamb. I love the idea that God says: "Look, you cretins, there are certain results to the way we are, to selfishness, and there’s mortality as part of your very sinful nature, and let’s face it, you’re not living a very good life, are you?" There are consequences to actions. The point of the death of Christ is that Christ took on the sins of the world, so that what we put out did not come back to us, and that our sinful nature does not reap the obvious death. That’s the point. It should keep us humbled… It’s not our own good works that get us through the gates of Heaven.

By the way, I'm reading Reaching Out: The Three Movements of the Spiritual Life by Nouwen. So GOOD! Actually, I have a confession. I don't usually like devotional books. I often find them to be simplistic and mundane. But this baby, is good stuff. Something you can drink deeply from.

Just a few jewels...

"But real openness to each other also means a real closedness, because only he who can hold a secret can safely share his knowledge. When we do not protect with great care our own inner mystery, we will never be able to form community."

"No friend or lover, no husband or wife, no community or commune will be able to put to rest our deepest cravings for unity and wholeness. And by burdening others with these divine expectations, of which we ourselves are often only partially aware, we might inhibit the expression of free friendship and love and evoke instead feelings of inadequacy and weakness."

Driving up to my driveway today I was greeted by salt and pepper colored flecks floating through the air. I sat there perplexed as my windshield was quickly covered with what turned out to be the ashes of a fire here in Rancho Palos Verdes.

Yeah, at first my roommate and I were a bit freaked out. But then after watching wealthy home owners with garden hoses on the news for a while, we decided it was far enough away that we didn't need to worry about it too much.

So don't worry...we're okay.

Apparently, Hermosa Beach has citywide free wireless. Because right now I'm sitting watching the suburbanite monsters try to drown each other in their cousin's pool while surfing the net.

Their cousin told me that Hermosa had 50,000 left over in their budget one year so they decided to give all of Hermosa Beach free wireless. Crazy. He says it's strongest at the beach. Right now I'm getting a low signal from his backyard but hey, it works.

Good thing that I just so happened to have my laptop in my car today. Otherwise I wouldn't have made this fun discovery. Now when I go biking from Manhattan Beach to Hermosa Beach, I'm going to strap my laptop on my back. ahh...maybe. :-)

But yeah, I'm nannying this summer. Thought it would be a fun summer job while I waited for school to start up again this fall. So far it is.....um....not exactly fun but how about an interesting social observation project.

Happy 4th of July everyone...

Yesterday I had the best time adventuring Palos Verdes and San Pedro with Bindu. We took a long ride along the coast in Palos Verdes and then ended the day at Shakespeare by the Sea, a live outdoor Shakespearean performance literally "by the sea". Great fun. If you live in the Los Angeles, you should check it out.
http://www.shakespearebythesea.org

Oh my gosh! It's July 1st! Whoa, time flies. In a couple days I will have been the US for a year. I'm not sure how I feel about that. To be honest, I still feel that I haven't completely acclimated back to American life. My internal frame of reference still tends to be Korea.

Well, I wasn't going to blog about that right now. I just wanted to post a portion of this article on blogging. It mentions that even though blogging is a huge movement, at the same many people don't really understand what blogging is. It tends to be one of those words people have heard but often don't really understand. I am frequently explaining to people what blogging is.

What a strange and amazing technological revolution we are apart of...

"It was Merriam-Webster Online's No. 1 word of 2004, and Fortune magazine named it the No. 1 tech trend for 2005. Two surveys by the Pew Internet & American Life Project in November 2004 found that 8 million people say they have created one and almost one-third of Internet users say they read one. But it's still a mystery: Six-of-ten Internet users say they don't know what "blog" means.

A blog, according to Merriam-Webster's Online Dictionary, is "a Web site that contains an online personal journal with reflections, comments and often hyperlinks provided by the writer."

Bloggers write about their lives to keep friends and family up-to-date, talk about their industry, discuss hobbies or rant about their favorite reality TV show. But posting pictures of you at work, disclosing confidential information about your employer, or bad-mouthing your co-workers could get you in hot water for committing inappropriate behavior."

The greatest truth I know is what I feel when I look in my niece's eyes.

I'm so easily confused about my life, burdened by the loneliness and darkness I see around me. Life can often seem colorless and meandering.

But when I look in my niece's eyes, eyes that glow with a pure truth, my relativism and pessimism lift and out shines one singular truth-love without condition.

I've always been one to tie myself in intellectual knots and it's always been the profound truth of simple love that has lifted the superfluous fog of my limited human logic.

It's this love that makes everything make sense; it's this love that makes things matter. It's in the light of this pure child-like love that our own darkness is exposed and our deepest redemption found.

I've been busy from dawn till dusk this last week. I'm feeling kind of homeless as I'm in the process of moving to Palos Verdes for the summer but all my stuff is in 3 different locations in Los Angeles right now.

As June and I were about to leave to Barnes and Noble tonight she said, "aren't you going to change?" She was commenting on my interesting combination of somewhat formal shirt and workout pants. But hey, that's what happens when your clothes are all over LA and you go on a weekend trip to San Diego to hang out with "the fam" and "the old school".

Man, I feel like I've been inundated with superficiality lately. It's been hitting me on all fronts. Men, friends, random people sitting next to me...

The girl sitting next to me has been absolutely driving me crazy! I'm trying to concentrate on my taxes and she's gossiping about some poor girl. But the poor girl is not the only object of her annoying, shallow tirades. She is also, of course, talking about how smart she is and how that guy that hit on her was obviously "not smart enough" because he's from the South. Whatever that means!

This is what her words sounded like to me, "whinewhinewhinenegativitybrattybrainlesswhine! Andasldijgfijfosdigj!"

Annoying!!!! I seriously can't understand why people waste their time going on and on about such meaningless bull crap. Unfortunately, I feel like I've been hearing a lot of things like this lately and I'm starting to wonder if the stereotypes of LA are more true than I originally thought.

sorry...venting....

The count down has begun. I'm moving to the OC one week from tomorrow. Time has flown by. It's weird to be moving again. Part of me feels like it's going to be like moving to a totally new city. Hopefully that's not true because it's not like I'm severing all the connections I've made here on the Westside.

It's funny-my roommates and I have been spending ridiculous amounts of time talking and hanging out at our place. It's like we're subconsciously trying to squeeze in as much time as possible before we separate.

Right now I think I'm suffering from a bout of post-semester disorientation. In this past week alone I've had two dreams in which I've woken up panicked about some paper I need to finish or some missing document that's going to bring my grade down. Of course, later after struggling for a minute to separate fact from dream, I realize that the semester is over and everything is complete. I also have that common summer feeling of, "what do I do now?" But it's not like I don't have a lot to do or a lot of things to enjoy. It's just that rapid change from stressed to unstressed that leaves a person a bit thrown off.

I guess it doesn't help that my stupid international tax situation is looming over my head. (don’t worry I got an extension) I've finally got all the answers I need to file though. So if you ever live overseas for a long time and need some tax help you know who to ask.

There's something sad about this cat and mouse game we call the dating game.

Often when a guy first starts pursuing me, unbeknownst to him I pull into myself. I start seeing the situation as if I was outside myself-an invisible, objective outsider merely observing the situation.

Something about that vantage point frequently pushes me into a state of melancholy. Here are two humans trying to make it through a maze of motives, expectations, and baggage to actually reach each other. Ironically in the process of trying desperately to connect, they often push each other further away.

This out-of-body experience has been especially stark with a couple guys. As one particular guy was talking on and on about all his ex-girlfriends over dinner, I felt close to tears. Not because of his obvious lack of awareness, but because in his desire to connect with me he had pushed me away.

It's the observer in me that is most grieved by this because that observer knows that this guy's behavior is reflective of what we all do at times-a micro-example of the human experience. Seeking selfishly to be loved, we push the chance for genuine love aside.

The dating game frequently thrusts me into a somber, thoughtful state. I so often feel like just a pawn on some guy’s chessboard. He's looking to win the game of love and in the pursuit of love he misses me-the person right in front of him.

Today I feel good about being in America. Just had a great day. Since I finished my grad classes Wednesday, I've found my myself in a unexpected whirl wind of socializing. Thursday night I said good-bye to my Westside small group cuz I'm moving to the OC baby (I just said that cuz it rhymes not cuz I'm particularly excited). Then saw Star Wars III Friday night, which as thoroughly reported already was very good and a bit sad. Then today I got up kind of early for a Saturday and went biking from Venice to Hermosa Beach with my small group and it really was jolly good fun.

I have that great tired/high kind of feeling that you get after working out for a long time. It feels so good when you take a shower and drink a veggie juice drink. (huh? well at least it does for me)

I was thinking of chilling and watching Gardenstate. (it's about time!). But I'm getting super tired now. Anyway, I was going to talk about way more interesting things than just babbling on. I guess I was going to say that I can already tell that Gardenstate is going to instantly put me in a pensive probably slightly sad mood.

This sentence alone on the back of the DVD case already is the story of my life, "Twentysomething, Andrew Largeman (Joyce ****), returns home after nine long years. Now as he(she) tries to re-connect with his (her) past...."

Heard a very interesting discussion on Evangelical influence on students at Ivy League schools on NPR today.

To listen click here. To read the NY Times article click here.

This article and the interview brought to the surface a lot of things that I've been thinking about for a while concerning America's current culture wars. I would like to think out loud about it but it's such a sensitive issue even between Christians.

One thing I'll venture to say about it right now is that American culture wars take on a different taint when you come back to them after living overseas for a long time. I'm being kind of general and cryptic...maybe I'll try to discuss some of this stuff after my classes are over. (yeah! 2 more classes then I'm done for the semester!) But knowing me once the moment's over I won't go back to it.

Here's a snippet from the NY Times article to whet your appetite:
"The growing power and influence of evangelical Christians is manifest everywhere these days, from the best-seller lists to the White House, but in fact their share of the general population has not changed much in half a century. Most pollsters agree that people who identify themselves as white evangelical Christians make up about a quarter of the population, just as they have for decades.

What has changed is the class status of evangelical. In 1929, the theologian H. Richard Niebuhr described born-again Christianity as the "religion of the disinherited." But over the last 40 years, evangelicals have pulled steadily closer in income and education to mainline Protestants in the historically affluent establishment denominations. In the process they have overturned the old social pecking order in which "Episcopalian," for example, was a code word for upper class, and "fundamentalist" or "evangelical" shorthand for lower.

Evangelical Christians are now increasingly likely to be college graduates and in the top income brackets. Evangelical C.E.O.'s pray together on monthly conference calls, evangelical investment bankers study the Bible over lunch on Wall Street and deep-pocketed evangelical donors gather at golf courses for conferences restricted to those who give more than $200,000 annually to Christian causes.

Their growing wealth and education help explain the new influence of evangelicals in American culture and politics. Their buying power fuels the booming market for Christian books, music and films. Their rising income has paid for construction of vast mega-churches in suburbs across the country. Their charitable contributions finance dozens of mission agencies, religious broadcasters and international service groups."

What are your thoughts on this? Are we becoming more influential because our money and education has increased or is it something else?

If it is true that we as a community have become more affluent in the last couple decades are we using our greater spending power to expand the kingdom of God (ex. reaching out to communities that are more needy economically, socially, spiritually) or are we primarily using it for ourselves and our community (ex. megachurch buildings, bookstores)?

There are a lot of other things I'd like to ask your thoughts on but I've got to get back to studying....

Hilarious...

http://www.storewars.org/flash/index.html...

and healthy too...

Bingo!!!

In all my Central Asia research, I've found a "to drool for" website. (This is the kind of website I've been envisioning..somebody already thought of it. That's alright I still have a couple ideas up my sleeve that might come to fruition someday over the rainbow....)

http://www.oneworldjourneys.com/

A statement that broke my heart tonight:

"One man, Abdulla Abdullaugli, 28, asked to take a reporter's notebook and then wrote a statement in Russian: "This is not radical Islam, simply people who want to live like the rest of the world." (meaning this uprising is not really about Islam but about people who want out of their poverty)

-taken from this article on the recent Islamic uprising in Uzbekistan

"Conformity"
(A young girl posing for a picture outside Tiananmen Square)

An old forgotten and unkept part of the great wall

Fishing boats in frozen lake, Great Wall, China

I guess this template will do. I couldn't really find a template I was satisfied with.

Now I need to put up those links, so I have easy access again to all the people that I surf.

I've decided that today I’m going to post the first installment of my very own on-going online photography exhibit. I was driving on the 5 the other day and it struck me that I would like to see all my best work together in one album. So I'm going to post my favorite pics little by little then transfer them to a “favorites” album on my photopage. It would just be interesting for me to see all those scattered experiences together in one place.

I just love photography. I'm having a hard time even beginning to explain what I love about it. There have been times when my students have brought some of their pictures to me and I've just stared at a certain pic. They had caught something on film-a movement in mid-stride, a shadow, an angle that was just right. They had caught "it".

I remember one time in particular when my TA showed me his pics of India. I exclaimed after breathing them in, "Ramon, these are good! Are you into photography?" But he didn't know what I was talking about. He had no special interest in photography and was awestruck that I saw anything special in his pics. I remember his look of, "Are we talking about the same pictures?" But in many of his pics he had caught "it". The hilarious thing was that he felt like I was picking the most inconsequential ones.

Photography feels very similar to poetry for me. I understand and create both art forms from the same place and with the same philosophy.

Wow, I've never tried to explain my ideas on photography before. That was hard. I'll have to think more about it and try to write about it again in a more articulate fashion.

Oh man, I'd really like to write right now but right now I should be stressing out about my presentation on my research paper on Central Asia tomorrow. Which currently I'm not...which is a bad thing.

Joyce, read my lips:

very important presentation tomorrow, wake up early go to stressful crummy work then drive through an hour of traffic to a very important presentation with lots of big eyes looking up at you the so-called grad student stumbling over her words if you don't get going NOW!

Comprehende? comprende? Kapish?